After nearly eight months of waiting, how lucky are we to be blessed with the start of college football season?
More teams will have something meaningful to play for this year, as the College Football Playoff expands to 12 teams. Every program aims to make a bowl game, but ones outside of the CFP landscape just don’t have the same excitement surrounding them.
The North Carolina Tar Heels are hoping to making something out of their season, in which very few outside of Chapel Hill have high expectations for them. UNC returns star running back Omarion Hampton and sack machine Kaimon Rucker, but does not have a clear-cut starting quarterback.
Even if North Carolina doesn’t make the CFP, head coach Mack Brown is giving his players something to play for.
In a performance-based motivator, the Tar Heels will bring back an old tradition of adding stickers to their helmets. This dates back to the 1970s, when Bill Dooley was the head coach.
“We felt like visible rewards were something to help motivate the guys and show who was doing well,” Brown told Lee Pace. “Everything we’re doing now is trying to get from winning eight or nine games to winning every game,” Brown says. “So, we’re pulling out every little stop we feel might help our guys to get better.”
Incentives that players can gain stickers for include: winning the opener at Minnesota, a running back hitting 100 total yards or 50 yards after contact, an offensive lineman executing a pancake block, a linebacker recording 10+ tackles, pinning an opponent inside its own 20-yard line and earning Player of the Week honors.
Will this incentive-based performance system actually help UNC win more games? North Carolina has a fairly favorable schedule, so there’s a solid possibility players exceed expectations.
Follow us @TarHeelsWire on X and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of North Carolina Tar Heels news, notes and opinions.